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Friday, December 29, 2017

If you're caught up in Star Wars fever but need a break from overpriced snacks and rude moviegoers, why not read some space opera? John Scalzi's The Collapsing Empireisn't Star Wars per se, but you should check it out if you like snarky humor .... in space!

The patented Scalzi Snark is turned up to 11 on this one, but behind it is an interesting story that's a melange of Asimov's Foundation, Herbert's Dune, and Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga ... with of course several heaping teaspoons of that aforementioned Scalzi Snark to spice things up.

Friday, December 22, 2017

Normally I think people are way too obsessed with avoiding spoilers. I can usually enjoy watching how something unfolds even if I know some of the key plot points (if all you care about is plot points, why not just read a plot summary on Wikipedia?).

But The Last Jedi is about thwarting expectations. As Luke Skywalker says, “This is not going to go the way you think.” I can report that knowing little about how it was going to go really did enhance my enjoyment of seeing it the first time, which was a set up to loving it even more the second time.

So, while my non-spoilery reviews of The Force Awakens and Rogue One were mainly a courtesy to the throngs of spoiler-hating fans, this non-spoilery review is out of my genuine feeling that The Last Jedi is best watched unspoiled. With that in mind, think of this as my non-spoilery advice for watching The Last Jedi.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin is the third in the trilogy following The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate. As both of this novel's predecessors won the Hugo for Best Novel, there were a lot of expectations for this one. How does it hold up?

Last weekend my wife and I
said goodbye to our friend, our family member, our cat Elsie.

If you don’t understand why
someone would feel intense grief at the loss of a pet or you’re thinking, “It’s
just a cat” or whatever, then this post is not for you.It’s a vast internet.You don’t have to be here.

But for many humans the loss
of a pet is traumatic.

Elsie was with us for over
15 years.My wife Beth adopted Elsie a
few months before we started dating, which I’ve always joked meant that she had
Elsie longer than she had me.As is
often the case, the cat picked out her human rather than the other way
around.Beth originally went to the
Humane Society to adopt another cat, but Elsie got her attention by rubbing up
against the cage.The decision was made.Elsie was one year old and had just weaned a
litter; Beth was looking to make some changes in her life, too, which included
getting her first cat mostly at the behest of her roommate at the time. Elsie and Beth became best friends.

I met Elsie a few months later,
when she insisted on sitting on my lap even though I was allergic (something
I’ve since gotten over … more-or-less).I’ve loved her ever since.I’ve
always liked cats.My grandma and other
family members had cats when I was growing up, but we never had cats at my
house.

Sunday, December 3, 2017

In the last week I've made two contributions to the world of online philosophy, which you can read about below. In the science fictional world, I'm working on reading some novels published in 2017 so I can compile a Best of 2017 list (I've finished Ada Palmer's Seven Surrenders, I'm working on N. K. Jemisin's The Stone Sky, and up next is Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140). Stay tuned.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

The "new world smell" has worn off by the second volume and I could never really follow all the levels of intrigue, but there are still plenty of ideas about utopia, gender, sex, politics, philosophy, history, religion, etc. to keep you thinking in this second book.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

I am excited to be taking part in the following workshop next week in Hamburg, Germany. If I have time, maybe I'll write a blog post about how it goes, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, here is the information, which I have also cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

There has been a lot of new science fiction/fantasy TV this fall. Some of my favorites from last year, like The Good Place and Stranger Things, are back, and I'll get to those in Part Two.One unique thing about fall 2017 is that we've been graced with not one, but two new space opera shows. It's a good year for space ships on TV, I guess. So without further ado, here are some thoughts on The Orville and Star Trek: Discovery!

Monday, October 30, 2017

Although this blog is mainly an excuse for me to geek out about science fiction (philosophically, of course), occasionally I like to post about my professional academic philosophy endeavors (although I would like to think the study of Indian philosophy will continue far into the future!). Here's something I've been working on over the past several months that I'm excited to announce!

Monday, October 23, 2017

Stephen Baxter is one of my favorite practitioners of so-called "hard science fiction" (a sub-genre generally longer on scientific speculation and Big Ideas than things like characterization and plot). Hard SF is not everyone's cup of tea, but Baxter brews some of the best hard SF tea there is. With Ultima, I particularly enjoyed thinking about the contingency of history in addition to Baxter's usual Arthur C. Clarke-style cosmic scale business.

Friday, October 20, 2017

Last weekend the hashtag
#metoo was shared by millions of people on social media.This hashtag was mostly – but not exclusively
– posted by women, often accompanied by stories of sexual harassment and sexual
assault.You can read more about the
origin of the idea here.

I have yet to comment on #metoo.I don’t think at the speed of the internet,
and besides, the last thing I want to do is make this about me.

I do want to say this: to
everyone who posted #metoo and to those who could not, I believe you. Of course, there’s a hashtag for
that, too - #ibelieveyou.But I want to dig
a bit beneath the hashtag, something that can be helped by a stubborn tendency
to think more slowly than the internet.

Sunday, October 8, 2017

After 35 years the iconic science fiction classic Blade Runner has a sequel in Blade Runner 2049. Should you see it? Is it any good? What's it about (without spoilers)? Check out my non-spoilery thoughts for answers!

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is not for the faint of heart or shallow of mind. It is equal parts challenging, beautiful, incomprehensible, maddening, and intriguing, a multi-tiered, polyphonic literary game the reader plays with the author. The reader is playing in Wolfe's house -- and the house always wins.

The Book of the New Sun was originally released as a series of four novels: The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), The Claw of the Conciliator (1981), The Sword of the Lictor (1982), and The Citadel of the Autarch (1983). There is some truth to the idea that this is a series, but, as with all appearances within the novels, there's a greater truth: it's really one long novel in four parts.

Sunday, October 1, 2017

The problem with our civilization is the death of
subtlety.Or – scratch that.One of many problems with a lot of the
culture of the United States in 2017 is that there is less subtlety than there
maybe should be.

I continue to have – albeit with somewhat diminished
enthusiasm as of late – hope that subtle questioning is on the whole a
better method than bludgeoning people with the truth.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Many of the most beloved science fiction series of the 20th century are set thousands or even millions of years in the future: Frank Herbert's Dune series, Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle(which includes The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed), Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, and so on.

By comparison, relatively few science fiction stories written in the last 20 years take place more than a couple hundred years in the future and most take place in the 21st century. Where did all the far-future science fiction go?

This is a question I've thought about a lot lately. I recently re-read the last book in the Dune series and am working my way through the delightfully/impossibly difficult Book of the New Sun, which my Goodreads review describes as "like taking an acid trip through a thesaurus."

Saturday, September 2, 2017

I’m not going to tell people to stop talking about
“political correctness”, because that would instantly cause some internet denizens to label me a
member of the SJW thought Gestapo for daring to express an opinion about what
people should do that can’t be reduced to “suck it up, snowflake!”

Instead, I encourage us all to engage in
something essential to both philosophy and science fiction: a thought
experiment.Imagine a world in which
everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped talking about “political correctness.”If you find that too far fetched, imagine
you are a human, alien, or robotic historian in the year 2117 trying to
understand the Culture Wars of the late 20th and early 21st
century.

Friday, August 25, 2017

This is my third time through the original Dune series. I always enjoy a visit to the Dune universe, but it's not because I'd actually want to live in that universe. It's all too intense for me. I love the books but I have to admit they're pretty bleak with all those "plans within plans within plans" in service of the raw pursuit of power. Dramatized with internal asides in italics!

For all their machinations and glorious battle, nobody in the Dune books really seems to be enjoying themselves in anything approaching a healthy way. At least until Chapterhouse: Dune, the sixth volume in the series and the last Frank Herbert wrote before his death in 1986.

Friday, August 18, 2017

I need a little break from thinking about all the terrorism, natural disasters, and general upheaval in the world in the last week, so I figured it was finally time to write my follow up to my Summer Movie Round Up, Part 1. I think I saw most of the big budget Hollywood science fiction and fantasy movies that came out since May (I deliberately skipped the new Transformers, but I'll bet my review would be, "Lots of explosions. Kinda dumb.")

Wonder Woman
I'm not the biggest fan of the super hero genre or its domination of the SF/F movie domain in recent years. But even a super hero curmudgeon like me could see that Wonder Woman was going to be special, seeing as Hollywood has managed to reboot Spider-Man three times in the last 15 years but had yet to make a big budget movie about the most iconic woman super hero. And they even had a woman at the helm with director Patty Jenkins. The best part for me: seeing this will annoy MRAs and other loathsome types.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Receptionist: Doctor, there's an invisible man in the waiting room.Doctor: Tell him I can't see him.
H. G. Wells and Ralph Ellison each wrote a novel about an invisible man. The titles are actually slightly different. Wells's is The Invisible Man while Ellison drops the "the." Aside from sometimes being confused with one another (as in the meme above), the books are typically thought to have nothing in common. It's not even clear if Ellison, writing 50 years after Wells, was familiar with Wells's novel, although his protagonist does allude to one or more of the films based on Wells's work.

I think for all their vast differences these two books have some surprising connections, especially when it comes to the complex relationships between the individual and society.

I'm starting with Ellison because I happened to read his book first, although for me the connections reach both ways.

Monday, August 7, 2017

A film like The Dark Tower presents a lot of challenges. It's based on a series of eight novels, a series that has some of Stephen King's most fervent fans. The universe is complex and weird enough that translating it to film is going to be tricky even over a few films. Making a single film digestible for people who haven't read any of the books is nearly impossible. And even worse: neither of the first two books would work as a stand-alone movie, because they're mostly set up and world building (see my bonus reviews of The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three below).

I liked The Dark Tower. Is it a great movie? Not exactly, but I think it did a good job considering the challenges any Dark Tower movie would face. I definitely don't think it deserves the mostly bad reviews it's been getting (although here's a fairer one from Allie Hanley).

This year as I partook of my frosty maternal communion, I thought about how everyone deals with grief and how this should be a route to compassion for each others. We're all in pain, and we're all in this together. So we should give everyone a break.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

I recently spent a few days with my wife in Panama City Beach, Florida. As a nerd by both profession and personal inclination, I've never been big on the beach life, requiring as it does physical activity in copious amounts of direct sunlight. Still, there's a lot to love about the beach even for nerds. So here are things I like and don't like about the beach!

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds has been on my to-read list for years. I've liked some of Reynolds's stuff, like last year's Hugo finalist Slow Bullets(although I honestly didn't love his much beloved Revelation Space). What struck me about Blue Remembered Earth was was that it's SF set in about 150 years in a world where African countries are basically running things with a little help from India and China - I'm intrigued! I'm glad I finally got to it, although it's not quite what I expected.

Reynolds starts slow and takes a long time to get going, but somehow this slowness didn't make me feel bogged down. It took me awhile to get through this, but that's because I had to put it down for awhile to get through a couple library books and my Hugo packet. This novel definitely could have been shorter, but I didn't mind the leisurely ride.

The plot begins with Geoffrey Akinya, a biologist in Tanzania who just wants to be left alone to study his beloved elephants. But Geoffrey happens to be a member of a rich and powerful family. When the matriarch of the family dies (Eunice, Geoffrey's grandmother), his cousins send him to the moon to pick up his grandmother's safety deposit box. Also, while he's there, he visits his sister, Sunday, who is an artist on the moon. This trip leads Geoffrey and Sunday on a bit of wild goose chase across the solar system that I don't want to spoil.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

The thing I've always loved about the Planet of the Apes movies (as well as Pierre Boulle's novel) is how deeply subversive it all is. Stories about "a planet where apes evolved from men" turn so many of our self-assured certainties on their heads when it comes to evolution, "progress," intelligence, race, and the place of humans in relation to our fellow animals and the universe. If you didn't read "a planet where apes evolved from men" in Charleton Heston's voice, I must insist that you go back and do so immediately (see the clip at the end if you need help).

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Hugo ballots are due TODAY (Sat. July 15, 2017). See my previous post for part one of my ballot as well as my three principles of Hugo voting. That post includes my votes for the main written fiction categories: novel, novella, novelette, and short story. Here's what I think about the other categories!

Friday, July 14, 2017

Hugo ballots are due TOMORROW (Sat. July 15, 2017). If you'd like to vote, you can do so from the Worldcon 75 website. I had a great time at last year's Worldcon in Kansas City, but unfortunately I won't be attending Worldcon in Helsinki this year. If you can't make it to Helsinki, either, you can still purchase a supporting membership for 35 euros, which entitles you to vote. But do it soon!There were a lot of great finalists this year. You can see them all on the official Hugo Award site. Way to go, science fiction and fantasy creators and fans! There were so many good finalists, I thought of some handy principles to help. Here are my three principles of Hugo voting (riffing a bit on Asimov's three laws of robotics just for fun).

Three Principles of Hugo Voting

Works that are more ground breaking in the field in their construction, plot, characters, setting, ideas, etc. are to be preferred as are works that are neither sequels nor works by authors who have won Hugos in recent years.

Works that delve more deeply into philosophical content are to be preferred.

Works that are just plain fun and enjoyable are to be preferred as long as such preference does not conflict with the first or second principles.

Much like Asimov's three laws, I'm not sure it's possible to coherently follow these principles, but I did the best I could. So without further ado...

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Last weekend I attended CONvergence in Bloomington, MN, which is, according to the website, "an annual convention for fans of Science Fiction and Fantasy in all media: a 4-day event with more than 6,000 members, and the premiere event of our kind in the upper mid-west."

CONvergence is also special for me personally as it was one of the first cons I ever attended back in 2001. I attended every year up through 2005, and I've been meaning to go back ever since. So this year's CONvergence was 12 years in the making for me! (What happened? Short answer: I moved away from the Twin Cities in August 2005 and never quite managed to get back to visit during CONvergence ... until this year!).

Monday, June 26, 2017

When I was in junior high in the early 1990's, my friend Adam kept telling me about this weird show called Twin Peaks. It didn't sound like the sort of show typical 14-year-olds would be into. I couldn't really tell what it was about, honestly, beyond some sort of murder mystery and an FBI agent who really liked pie. I probably watched a couple episodes, said, "Cool," and moved on.

Several years later when we were (technically) adults, Adam had a weekend Twin Peaks marathon on VHS (this was way before Netflix made marathon viewing a normal thing). I've been a big fan ever since. I've watched the original series a few times, most recently to prepare for the new season/return on Showtime. Incidentally, Adam and I are still good friends, and it may be no coincidence that he became a horror and fantasy author -- check out his stuff as well as what he has to say about Twin Peaks.

The original Twin Peaks was many things: a murder mystery, an evening soap opera, an investigation into the seedier side of small town America. But as compelling as all that was, for me the greatest achievement of Twin Peaks was its unrepentant weirdness that constantly leaves me wondering, "How in the hell did this get on TV?" (Okay, the commercial success of movies like David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986)probably had something to do with it, but that really only deepens the mystery if you actually watch his movies.)

(Warning: Very minor spoilers ahead. I'm mentioning things in general terms, not discussing major plot points).

Friday, June 23, 2017

The problem with our contemporary culture isn’t that
people can often be callous and irrational.
That’s our lot as imperfect creatures.
The problem is that we seem to have given up the idea that we can do any
better.

In fact, being callous toward others seems to be increasingly worn as a badge of honor. It can be a form of powerful moral grandstanding to be callous toward a particular group of others. Even our entertainment often celebrates individuals who obtain what they want through callousness to everyone else.

Many white Americans have a cultivated
callousness toward black Americans, demonstrated most recently after the acquittal of the police officer who killed Philando Castile. Although this case also has to do with
structural legal issues that make it almost impossible to convict police
officers, I see no sense in denying that responses would be different had Castile been white, especially from white Americans who say things like, "He didn't comply!" (with the implication that he thereby deserved to die) or the NRA's near silence in a case that ought to be a rallying cry for Second Amendment defenders.

Thursday, June 8, 2017

I enjoyed The Medusa Chronicles, a novel-length sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's novella "A Meeting with Medusa." It really does feel a lot like reading Arthur C. Clarke but with a few modernizations, including the presence of a few actual women (granted, most of them don't have particularly major parts, but there is at least one prominent alien gendered as female and she's not even sexy to human males, so that's something).

Clarke is one of my all time favorites, and my favorite of the so-called Big Three ahead of Asimov and Heinlein. Reading Clarke as a teenager, especially 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama, is what got me fully hooked on science fiction literature (as opposed to science fiction movies and TV, which I had been enjoying as long as I can remember). In fact, Clarke's mind-expanding Big Ideas also probably helped set me on the path to becoming a philosopher. Thinking about human origins and destinies, the vastness of time and space, and the fathomless mysteries of the universe is what continues to draw me to both science fiction and philosophy. (It also motivates this blog!).

Since Clarke took his own journey through the Star Gate in 2008, he's not producing anything new (at least that we know of - maybe he's working as a Star Child somewhere).

So what's a Clarke fan filled with nostalgia to do? Here's where Baxter and Reynolds come in! They wrote a novel as as sequel to Clarke's novella "A Meeting with Medusa," in which Howard Falcon descends into the atmosphere of Jupiter and discovers life in the form of giant, two-kilometer-wide creatures he calls medusae. The story ends with a tantalizing line that the main character, half-human and half-machine, lived on for centuries. The Medusa Chronicles is that story. (It was also cool to re-read Clarke's novella and to read the sequel soon after the recent real life photos of Jupiter from the Juno spacecraft).

Saturday, June 3, 2017

In recent years famous scientists such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Stephen Hawking have declared that philosophy is useless. I shrugged this off for the most part since I'm used to people making uninformed pronouncements about my discipline. Still, given philosophy's public relations problem, it's troubling to hear this sentiment from respected public figures.

But as Socrates says in the Apology, if people are mistaken, you should calmly correct their errors rather than punishing them (informing people about philosophy is in fact part of the mission of this blog). I also still admire Tyson, Nye, and Hawking (or maybe I'm in an abusive relationship with science). Tyson, for his part, later added a little bit of nuance to his comments. Besides, he has said philosophical things, too (see above).

Rather than getting all confrontational and claiming that philosophy is better than science (I like both just fine) or that philosophy is harder than science (I'd say they're difficult in different ways), I'm continuing my series on the uses of philosophy.

Monday, May 29, 2017

This was my first time reading Willis. I had heard of her, both as a frequent Hugo and Nebula winner but also as an example of a humorous SF writer. I don't think there's enough humorous science fiction out there, so I was keen to check this out.

The basic idea: Oxford historians in the 2050's use time travel to go back to a variety of eras. They can't take any objects back with them or make any major changes to the timeline, but they are able to interact with and observe the past. Given these limitations, time travel has no real commercial applications and is left mainly to historians and wealthy eccentrics. The main character Ned Henry has done several too many "drops" into the past, resulting in excessive "time lag" (sort of like jet lag but funnier). To recuperate and to avoid the overbearing benefactor of the time travel program, Ned goes back to Victorian England in 1888. Of course, it turns out he's actually been sent on a mission to locate a certain artifact, a hideous Victorian monstrosity called the Bishop's bird stump, which they need to replicate as part of the rebuilding of the Coventry Cathedral that was destroyed in WWII. Hijinks and hilarity (and even a bit of romance) ensue.

After a mostly terrible summer movie season in 2016, I've been hoping for a better one in 2017. Early results are showing that we may be in for something a bit better than last year. That is, at least if the first three summer movies I've seen are any indication: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, Alien: Covenant, and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

Friday, May 19, 2017

Scholars of all types of philosophy are fond of referring to philosophical traditions. But what does this mean? What counts as a tradition?

In the Indian context one way to discuss a tradition is with the word darśana, which literally means view or viewpoint from the root “dṛś” – “to see.” It can also be translated as “school.”

We might also look to the etymology of the English word “tradition,” which derives from the Latin “traditio” (a handing down, delivery). Must a tradition be handed down through interpersonal transmission from teacher to student in the traditional Indian model? Or could it be a matter of later philosophers being inspired by reading particular texts, or perhaps some combination of interpersonal transmission and textual inspiration?

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Heinlein has always been my least favorite of the Big Three (my ranking: Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein), but I thought I'd give him another chance. I checked out The Moon is a Harsh Mistress from the public library, because the thought of borrowing a book about libertarian revolution from my favorite tax-supported socialist institution amused me. There were some things I liked about this one, but there's also a lot I disliked, especially the misogyny. The rest of this review will take place in the form of an imagined dialogue with a Heinlein fan, because that's how I was able to work out what I thought about this one.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Jokes like this demonstrate the eternal verity that
philosophy is useless, an attitude that goes back to ancient times.As a person who makes a living teaching and
writing about philosophy, you’d expect me to disagree with this negative
assessment of philosophy.And I do!Back in 2015 I wrote a post called “Three Uses of Philosophy” that suggested philosophy has at least three uses: it can be fun, it cultivates
intellectual skills such as critical thinking, and it can make us less dogmatic.

I happen to think that philosophy has lots of uses, a lot more than three, anyway.So I decided to make a series based on my
earlier post.Another use occurred to me
a few months ago when I was teaching the 17th century Dutch
philosopher Baruch Spinoza in one class and the classical Indian skeptics Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrī Harṣa in another.I call this coolness of mind, a state in
which your worries melt away, a freedom from the heat of mental disturbance and
the churnings of suffering and anxiety.Coolness of mind contains a subtle and peaceful beauty of its own, like
the quiet of the desert just before dusk or a moonlit midnight after a gentle
snowfall.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Lately I've seen a fair number of movies in the science fictional/fantastic realm, but with the exception of Ghost in the Shell (both the 1995 anime and the 2017 live action remake) I've been remiss when it comes to reviewing them. Alas, it's time to rectify this unconscionable situation with a movie round up! Here are my short reviews of Life, Logan, Get Out, Kong: Skull Island, and - just to keep things from being 100% Hollywood - the Irish/Welsh indie film A Dark Song.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

We’re well represented. Here in the United States (my home country and focus here), the
majority of Senators and Representatives have always been white dudes, not to
mention 44 out of 45 US Presidents.The
majority of actors in leading roles in Hollywood movies are white dudes, as are
most Hollywood directors.Most corporate
CEO’s, military leaders, educational administrators, and so forth are white
dudes.

We white dudes have done some pretty cool stuff.Plato and Aristotle were white dudes,
although nobody realized this until the construction of modern racial
identities in the European Enlightenment, which was also the work of white
dudes (and a few white dudettes).Many
of my favorite science fiction and fantasy authors are white dudes: J. R. R.
Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Iain M. Banks, Kim Stanley Robinson, etc.Some of my best friends are white dudes.

White dudes are far less likely than others to be harassed
or to receive threats of violence in person or online.We are less likely to be murdered by our
romantic partners or by the police.White
dudes who engage in mass murder are framed as troubled loners, but rarely as
terrorists or thugs.We statistically
get paid more for the same work as other people.

We white dudes have a lot of privileges, which as science
fiction author and white dude John Scalzi has pointed out, is like playing a
video game on the easy setting. We still have to put in the effort to play the
game, but it’s easier for us, especially if we're straight, cisgender, non-disabled, and come from middle to upper class socioeconomic backgrounds.White
dudes’ greatest privilege is that we can choose to ignore all this and go about
our lives in the invisible safe space of a world made for us.

Man, it’s pretty awesome to be a white dude!But you’d never know it if you listened to a
lot of white dudes these days, which as a white dude myself I find kind of
weird.

Sunday, April 2, 2017

I didn’t hate everything
about the 2017 Ghost in the Shell remake.
If I weren’t a huge fan of the 1995 anime film, I maybe even would’ve liked it
a lot. But alas, the remake falls as
flat as anyone who stands in the Major’s way.

I debated for a long time whether I even wanted to see the
remake.There’s of course the
whitewashing issue of having most of the main characters played by white actors
(more on that later).There’s also my
general fatigue with Hollywood remakes and sequels (although I’d be lying if I
said I weren’t as excited as I am apprehensive about the upcoming Alien and Bladerunner sequels).

The three works in question are all relatively short, hovering near the border between long novellas and short novels. Okorafor's Binti: Home is a longish novella while Brackett's The Nemesis from Terra and Le Guin's Planet of Exile are each really short novels.

All three works deal with the idea of being at home. This theme is clearest in Binti: Home (it's right in the title!), where the title character returns home after an interstellar sojourn. Brackett and Le Guin ask whether you can be at home in a place you're not expected to be at home; Okorafor deals with not being at home in a place where you expect to be.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

A, B, Cis a nice omnibus collection of three early short novels of SF genius Samuel R. Delany. Each novel was originally written in the early 1960's, although Delany did some revision of Çiron in the 90's. There's quite a bit in the way of forword and afterword written in 2014. The afterword gets a bit academic, which may not be to everyone's taste, but then I suspect most serious Delany fans aren't the type to scared by citations of Derrida and Wittgenstein and lengthy footnotes.

Like most of Delany's early work (e.g., see my review of Nova), the novels are well written with hints of the depth of his later genius. The Ballad of Beta-2 was my favorite, but I enjoyed the others more than I was expecting. Sticking with the alphabetic contrivance of the title, I'll review them in order.

Monday, March 13, 2017

Today would have been my mom's 68th birthday. Although she died almost 17 years ago, I still commemorate this day every year with a little tradition that she called her "recommended daily dose of Dairy Queen." Today it was one of her favorites: a hot fudge malt!

As I took my maternal communion, I thought about how much I miss her and how much she made me who I am today. As I usually do, I also pondered a lot of "what ifs?"

I had a great time at both events, but they conspired to put me a bit behind in my usual responsibilities (like grading midterm papers). So rather than an elaborate report, I thought I'd offer a few highlights from my experiences at each conference.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

My colleagues Talia Welsh and Bo Baker asked me to visit their team-taught course Honors 3590: Non-Western Cultures: Zen, Film, and Anime at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. In preparation for this event, I thought I’d write a blog post to collect my thoughts on the film we’ll be discussing, which also happens to be one of my favorites. Note that I am discussing the original 1995 animated film directed by Mamoru Oshii.

“Do you even know who you are?”

– The Major

I’ve honestly never been a huge anime fan, but I’ve loved Ghost in the Shell since I first saw it in the 90’s. First of all, it’s one of the most beautiful anime films out there. The meditative city montages alone are worth the price of admission.

But it’s also one of the most philosophically profound movies out there, anime or otherwise. It gets deep from the first moments. The intro tells us, “the advance of computerization … has not yet wiped out nations and ethnic groups” (Is there a reason to think it will?). There’s also the issue of all those lingering shots of the Major’s body: What’s the line between a problematic male gaze and artistic statements about corporality?

But the deepest issue of all is personal identity. Consider the Major’s post-scuba diving soliloquy.

“There are countless ingredients that make up the human body and mind like all the components that make up me as an individual with my own personality. Sure, I have a face and voice to distinguish myself from others. But my thoughts and memories are unique only to me. And I carry a sense of my own destiny. Each of those things are just a small part of it. I collect information to use in my own way. All of that blends to create a mixture that forms me and gives rise to my conscience. I feel confined, only free to expand myself within boundaries.”

Like anime science fiction more generally, Ghost in the Shell combines modern, computerized themes with ancient philosophical roots. The personal identity questions in the film are asked with the accent of modern computer technology but the deeper grammar is that of Buddhist philosophy.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

While Donald Trump himself often comes across as a buffoon, there's nothing particularly funny about Trumpism as a political ideology: it's by and large a bleak, dystopian affair filled with horrific problems that only a superhero/savior can fix. "I alone can fix it," Trump said during the Republican National Convention. "This American carnage stops right here and stops right now," he said during his inauguration speech.

There wasn't much humor for people who were detained at airports due to the administration's ill-conceived and possibly unconstitutional travel ban. Trump's cabinet thus far, which includes controversial members like Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, and Betsy DeVos, is no laughing matter. And those are just the major points. It's frankly almost impossible to keep up with the administration's deeds from the nefarious to the bizarre (this website makes a good attempt).

It might seem like there would be precious little levity in these Trumpian times. Yet in the last few weeks comedy has been made great again.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

I originally intended to write a Best TV of 2016 post. But now that we're veering toward mid-February 2017, it seemed a bit late for that. Also, I watched a few new things while I was putting off writing this post. So I give you: Recent TV Round Up featuring Stranger Things, The Good Place, Westworld, Sense8, and The OA!

About Me

I am a science fiction fan and philosophy professor. I've been a science fiction fan as long as I can remember, and I later realized that I was also interested in philosophy all along! Examined Worlds brings my two favorite things together. See the About page for more about me.